My Juliet Read online

My Juliet, it says.

  By the time she returns to the dining room he’s already cleared her table. The menu is gone, the flatware put away.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he says. “I thought you’d left.”

  “You know what I think, Louis? I think you were a cripple long before you ever lost that leg.”

  He doesn’t seem to be listening. “Leave him be, Juliet. That’s all I ask.”

  “Cripple,” she repeats in a small voice.

  “I’ll tear your heart out if you hurt him again. I’ll lay it hot and bleeding between some French bread and make me a Juliet poboy. Don’t think I’m playing, either.”

  “I’m just now remembering something,” she says. “Maybe this was just a rumor spreading around—it reached me way out in California, anyway—but that leg wasn’t all you lost, was it? You left something else in the road, didn’t you?”

  “You got a lot of nerve bringing that up,” he says.

  “Too bad. Because even before, you were a little sawed off in that department, weren’t you?”

  On the banquette outside she stands at the window watching as he moves to the bar and pretends to eat a Juliet poboy. She sticks her tongue out and presses it against the glass, but he keeps munching on the imaginary sandwich.

  She shoots him the bird and still he eats.

  “How come you peed on the schoolteacher, Juliet?”

  “Penis.”

  “How come you killed your mama like that, Juliet?”

  “Penis.”

  In the end she walks off dragging her right leg just as he dragged his, the echo of her laughter bouncing off the old buildings pressing in on her along the street.

  When Sonny parks the truck in front of the Maison Orleans Nursing Home Mr. LaMott is already waiting outside with a nurse’s aide. The woman holds her arms crossed at her massive chest, rather like a schoolyard bully without an ounce of mercy left. She seems less likely to greet him with a hello than to punch him in the mouth.

  “You know I’m always on time, Agnes. Won’t you forgive me this once?”

  “I don’t like being out the air condition.”

  “Yes, and I feel terrible about it.”

  The woman helps Mr. LaMott into the truck and Sonny thanks her with a pat on the back and he and his father start on their way to the Rigolets. The old man is wearing what he always wears when they go fishing: rubber boots, khaki pants, a golf hat decorated with antique lures, and a navy polo shirt with the name Paul Piazza & Son scripted in gold thread across the breast. Until a few years ago when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Mr. LaMott was the top salesman for Piazza, a wholesale shrimp distributor with headquarters near the cemeteries just north of the French Quarter. The last time Sonny asked his father about Piazza, Mr. LaMott said he liked his with anchovies and extra cheese.

  Earlier this morning Sonny strapped the rods, tackle box and ice chest to an anchor in the truck bed, and every few miles he throws a glance back to make sure everything’s riding okay. “Looks good,” he says, nodding at his father.

  “Looks good,” comes Mr. LaMott’s enthusiastic reply.

  Today the weather is nice and balmy and Sonny and Mr. LaMott drive with the windows down. Music plays on the radio, show tunes from long ago. Sonny tries to coax Mr. LaMott into singing along but the old man is too busy opening and closing the window vent.

  “You know this one, Daddy? Let me hear it.”

  Mr. LaMott doesn’t do so much as hum.

  On the Chef Menteur Highway they pass a settlement populated with Vietnamese immigrants and Sonny remarks as to how hard these people work shrimping the Gulf but Mr. LaMott seems as clueless about shrimping as he is about Vietnamese. Besides, he has that vent to fool with.

  “I think I’ve been here before,” Mr. LaMott says as Sonny turns into the parking lot at a waterfront restaurant/lounge called Captain Bruce’s.

  “Daddy, we were here last week,” Sonny says, glad to hear his father speak again at last. “You don’t remember we came fishing here last week?”

  Mr. LaMott seems to be trying to remember if he remembers.

  “It’s okay if you don’t,” Sonny says. He steps out onto the lot covered with crushed oyster shells. “The only bites we got were from mosquitoes, anyway.”

  The building is uneven sheets of tin and plywood inexpertly applied to a skeleton of two-by-fours. It rests on cement standards maybe fifty feet from some of the best fishing in the southern United States. A sign on the door advertises a 1-800 number for alcoholics and inside fishermen crowd the bar running from the front to the rear of the room. Everybody seems to be drinking the same brand of beer and picking from identical platters of boiled shrimp and new potatoes. Up high near the ceiling a muted TV set shows a home shopping channel and the deal of the day: a ladies’ curling iron slashed to more than half the manufacturer’s suggested retail price. “I need me one of them,” Sonny hears one of the drunks mutter from the middle of the bar.

  “You ain’t got no hair to curl,” shouts another.

  “Yeah, but at least I can get it up,” says the first man, confounding Sonny but drawing a great riot of laughter from everyone else.

  Captain Bruce drifts over and Sonny gives him a five-dollar bill, the fee for fishing rights off the pier behind the building. The captain wears Wrangler jeans a size too small and his shirtsleeves cover tattoos of fight roosters raining feathers. Today the captain has little to say except for how the Saints did themselves no favors in yesterday’s draft of college football talent. “Eleven picks and every one a colored,” he says. “You’d think they could find one white boy that can play.”

  “Mark my words, they inheriting themselves some serious behavioral problems,” says the man who wanted the curling iron.

  Sonny puts another bill on the bar and asks for beer and ice and bait shrimp. No surprise, Captain Bruce gives him a six-pack of the same cheap stuff everyone else is drinking, Old Milwaukee in the can.

  “Your daddy don’t even know who you are, does he, LaMott?” the captain says as Sonny is heading back outside.

  “You’re wrong there, Captain,” Sonny says after deciding the man means no harm.

  “He’s senile and retarded, both. Got it coming and going.”

  “He suffers from Alzheimer’s. It’s a disease that mainly afflicts senior citizens.”

  Captain Bruce seems to be sizing Sonny up. “Yeah, well, that’s what you say. But he’s too young for no Alzheimer’s.”

  “He’s sixty-four.”

  “I’m sixty-two and how come I don’t have it?”

  “I guess the good Lord has given you a pass on that one, Captain.”

  The captain shakes his head. “That man, your daddy? I want you to leave him at home next time, LaMott. He’s got no bidness coming out here. My insurance finds out I got somebody like that fishing off my pier they raise my premium overnight.”

  Sonny stares for a long time. “Thank you for the beer, Captain.”

  Sonny loads the ice and beer into his Igloo, his father watching through the back window. Then he lugs the cooler and the rest of the gear to the end of the pier. Lastly he helps Mr. LaMott from the truck, offering encouragement as his father tests his footing and gets his bearings. “Okay, Daddy. Take it slow now. Take it slow. I’m here.”

  When they reach the pier, Sonny ties a length of rope around the old man’s waist then loops the other end around his own. The distance between them runs about ten feet, but if Mr. LaMott suddenly were to decide to go for a swim Sonny would be able to fish him out. You can never be too safe with people sick like his father. In the news they are constantly drifting off, heading for the woods or the interstate, too lost to know they’re lost. By the time the bloodhounds find them it’s too late but for the undertaker.

  “Hey, Daddy. What say we go catch us some fish?”

  After a few hours the lake breeze dies and the air starts to heat up and Sonny and Mr. LaMott drink the beers and suck on chunks of ice as the sun broi
ls their arms and necks. As usual the fish aren’t biting so Sonny crowds the time with stories about when he was a kid and his mother was alive and Mr. LaMott was the top shrimp salesman for Paul Piazza & Son. The more Sonny talks the more he is able to recall. He describes the Ninth Ward as it was twenty years ago before most of the old families moved to the suburbs and you stopped feeling safe to walk the streets at night. He names the neighbors, the Irish and the Italians who worked the riverfront, the blacks who played music and staffed the kitchens in the bars and restaurants of the Vieux Carré. He names the coaches who coached him in summer-league baseball at the Saint Roch playground. He talks about Otto’s Pharmacy, now a grocery store, and about the year it snowed and how school closed and everybody ran in the streets biting at the flakes in the cold air. He names the meals his mother used to cook: crawfish étouffée, shrimp surprise, ground meat casserole, round steak with rice and gravy, stuffed bell peppers, mirliton dressing, bread pudding made with fruit cocktail, raisins and whiskey or “hard” sauce. Sonny talks about waking up before dawn and walking with his mother to Saint Cecilia and Father Michael saying Mass in Latin and Sonny, an altar boy then, ringing the bells whenever Father Michael lifted the blood or the body of Christ. He talks about how sometimes afterward he and Mrs. LaMott took a bus to the French Quarter for beignets and café au lait and the water trucks washing down the streets and on Mondays the smell of red beans cooking and how his mother would still be in her church veil and carrying a missal. Sonny talks and it comes back and he feels a deep, swimming sadness for all that will never be again.

  “Where is Mama?” Mr. LaMott says when Sonny seems to have finished.

  “Mama died in 1982, Daddy. She had that stroke, remember?”

  Mr. LaMott seems to take this as a surprise. He reels in his line and sits for a long time staring at his artificial lure.

  “I been meaning to tell you something, Daddy,” Sonny says, “and I hope you can grab ahold of this.” Mr. LaMott doesn’t respond, and Sonny continues, “I been wanting to tell you you were right about most everything you ever said to me. You were a real good father to me.”

  Mr. LaMott just stares—not at Sonny, but at his lure.

  “After high school when the government didn’t draft me I should’ve been a man about it and enlisted and gone on to Vietnam or else enrolled at LSU like you wanted me to. You were right about me being just a so-so bartender and an even worse painter. I’m sure that wasn’t easy for you to say, and I’m sorry I didn’t listen. Because I realize it now, I realize all you said was meant to help me. Sometimes I think that that war, crazy as it was, might’ve helped me. Korea helped you, right?” Sonny reaches over and takes the lure from his father’s hands. “I wish you’d said something about Juliet, though. That time I brought her to the house for dinner? You should’ve talked to me about her then—you and Mama, both. Not that I’d have listened, understand? But at least now you could be saying ‘I told you so.’ ”

  “I told you so,” says Mr. LaMott.

  “No, you didn’t. That’s the point I’m trying to make. You didn’t tell me anything.”

  It had been his mother’s idea, to meet Sonny’s girlfriend and have her over for dinner. After she’d finished cooking Mrs. LaMott went down the hall to her bedroom and changed into an outfit heretofore reserved for weddings and holy days of obligation. As for Mr. LaMott, he wore his lone sport coat, the tweed one with elbow patches, even though it was a muggy spring evening. Sonny can still remember the meal his mother prepared: smothered pork chops, white beans and rice, wop salad crowded with black olives and artichoke hearts, French bread lathered with garlic butter and toasted to a crispy brown in the broiler, and sliced Creole tomatoes still warm from the sun. Juliet contributed the dessert, a pineapple upside-down cake studded with maraschino cherries. “You made that?” Mr. LaMott asked.

  “Yes sir. Well, me and Anna Huey did. She’s the lady who works for us.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s made from scratch. I didn’t even use a mixer to mix the batter.”

  “You mean you did all that by hand?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Now isn’t that something,” and he seemed truly amazed.

  Sonny was too nervous to say or eat much. How Juliet, a fancy girl from a fancy family, would take to his humble Bywater family had put his stomach in knots. He remembers little of what was said at the table, but afterward he and Juliet went for a drive in the Vieux Carré. They stopped for beer at the A&P on Royal Street and Sonny kept a bottle between his legs as he held the wheel with one hand and rested the other on her shoulder. “What did you think?” he said, anxious to know if he had passed muster.

  She looked at him with a dreamy expression and leaned over and softly kissed the side of his face. “Now I know why you’re so beautiful.”

  He was back home before 10:00 P.M., and his mother, having cleaned the kitchen, had already gone to bed. Mr. LaMott, however, was sitting in his chair under a lamp reading a day-old copy of the Times-Picayune. He had his pajamas on. “What did you think?” Sonny said. He had become hungry again, and in the dark kitchen he pulled the refrigerator door open and stood bathed in cold yellow light.

  “What do I think about what?” his father asked casually.

  “You know about what. About Juliet.”

  Mr. LaMott turned the page. “Oh, Juliet. Yes. Seems like a fine girl.”

  “Did Mom like her?”

  “Yes, she did,” Mr. LaMott answered. “Your mother did like her. In particular she seemed to enjoy something Juliet said when the two of us were out of earshot.”

  “Oh, yeah? What was that?”

  “Well,” and his father still seemed to be reading, “they were picking up in the kitchen before dessert, and your mother asked Juliet if she was ready for pineapple upside-down cake. Juliet—and even I was surprised to hear this—Juliet put her hand down around her midsection here and said, ‘If I eat another bite I think I’ll vomit.’ ”

  Sonny almost dropped his bottle of milk. “She said she’d vomit?”

  His father put the paper down and removed his glasses. Then suddenly, unable to maintain the guise any longer, he erupted with a bright roar of laughter. “Just pulling your leg, boy. Relax.”

  How had a girl who ate his mother’s smothered pork chops become an actor in dirty movies? It made even less sense then Mr. LaMott’s decline from the best and funniest guy Sonny knew to the halfwit sitting before him now. Sonny leans forward bringing his face up to search for something that hasn’t been in his father’s eyes for years. He’s looking for life.

  “Daddy, why didn’t you tell me Juliet would go bad like that?”

  Mr. LaMott, his cheeks growing red with blood, pushes past Sonny as he comes to his feet. Sonny anticipates a weighty declaration, something to hang on to forever. But his father unzips his pants and pokes his hand in the opening. “Hey, look, mind if I pee in your water?”

  It is dark when they start back for the city. Sonny, who’s run out of memories to share, drinks the last of the beer as his father sleeps on the bench seat beside him. No one is waiting when they pull up at the Maison Orleans. Sonny reties the tether between them and none of the staff says anything when they pad through the front door and enter the building.

  Sonny helps Mr. LaMott all the way down the hall to his room, the rope dragging the high-polished floor. “I think I’ve been here before,” Mr. LaMott says in a quiet voice as Sonny takes his clothes off and puts him to bed.

  He stops her as she’s crossing the lobby headed for the elevators. “May I have a moment of your time, Miss Beauvais?”

  “A moment? Sure, you can have a moment.”

  There are two important matters they need to discuss, he explains. First is the condition of the bed in her room. Did a child sleep over last night? The mattress was so saturated with urine that it had to be changed.

  He advises her to call Housekeeping and request a plastic sheet to safeguard against f
uture accidents.

  Next is her credit card account, which has rejected more charges. Will she please follow him to the desk and make other arrangements to pay her bill?

  “Not now,” Juliet says.

  “Yes now,” says the man.

  “Suppose I don’t feel like it?”

  “Then I’m afraid I have no choice but to ask you to vacate the premises.”

  She gives him most of what she earned from the schoolteacher. But that only covers the balance and room charges for tonight and tomorrow. Was it her idea to fly to New Orleans and stay in an expensive hotel and rent a car and eat by herself in restaurants? Schoolteachers don’t make any money!

  Blood rising in her face, Juliet returns to her room and phones the mansion. “Anna Huey, it’s me and I want my money and I want it now.”

  “Yes,” says the maid, “yes, of course.”

  “Don’t you yes-of-course me,” Juliet shouts into the mouthpiece. “I want my money.”

  “And you’ll get it. Or get some. How much do you want?”

  Juliet, figuring, is slow to answer. “Five thousand should do.”

  “We think two’s enough. But you’ll have to come get it . . . come here to the house.”

  Anna Huey is silent, and Juliet can hear a clock ticking in the background. The Beauvais grandfather clock in the parlor. Her clock, goddammit.

  “Your poor mama,” Anna Huey says. “She’s upstairs now, crying her precious eyeballs out.”

  Juliet makes a sound that could be another laugh. “She should be in her room crying. The guilt alone must be awful.” She waits a few seconds, then adds, “Mother killed him, after all.”

  It feels good to have said it finally, even if it is just the maid on the other end. Juliet has wanted to say those words ever since the truth about her father’s demise popped in her head as she was working on “The Proof” during the flight in.

  “Juliet, you can come get your money whenever you’re ready to sit and act like a normal person. Your mother has something to talk to you about. Until you can do that, let me advise you to keep the lid closed on your sick, deranged mind. Do you understand what I’m saying?”